Coming from Tor.com Publishing in April 2018, Ian McDonald weaves a love story across time in his new science fiction novella Time Was. Tom and Ben are torn apart by a time travel experiment gone awry. Can they find each other across the decades? Can they seize control of their desperate timelines? We’re excited to share the cover and the story below!

Time Was is coming from Tor.com Publishing in April 2018. From the catalog copy:

A love story stitched across time and war, shaped by the power of books, and ultimately destroyed by it.

In the heart of World War II, Tom and Ben became lovers. Brought together by a secret project designed to hide British targets from German radar, the two founded a love that could not be revealed. When the project went wrong, Tom and Ben vanished into nothingness, presumed dead. Their bodies were never found.

Now the two are lost in time, hunting each other across decades, leaving clues in books of poetry and trying to make their desperate timelines overlap.